INTERDISCIPLINARY U.VA. GROUP WILL TRAVEL TO BRAZILIAN CITY TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Feb. 26 -- Could Virginia and the rest of the world ever hope to have a highly productive but socially just economic system that allows large populations to live in harmony with the environment? To help answer that question, the University of Virginia is sending a group of faculty and students to a rapidly urbanizing city in southeast Brazil next month. And in April, the city of Curitiba's former mayor will come to Virginia to receive one of U.Va.'s highest honors. Sponsored by U.Va.'s new Institute for Sustainable Design, the faculty-student team -- from such diverse fields as education, engineering, business, urban and environmental planning, landscape architecture, architecture and urban design -- will spend a week in Curitiba talking to counterparts in those fields and to local officials and studying the city, which, despite Third World obstacles, has been called one the most environmentally advanced on earth. From April 11-14, in commemoration of Thomas Jefferson's 254th birthday, Jaime Lerner, Curitiba's former mayor who helped plan many of the city's successful innovations, will visit here to receive the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Medal in Architecture and participate in several public events on environmental issues. U.Va. President John T. Casteen III will host a dinner to honor Lerner and inaugurate the Institute for Sustainable Design. "We believe that Curitiba is perhaps the best example in the world of an urban system that is sustainable," said William McDonough, dean of U.Va.'s School of Architecture who has spearheaded the new interdisciplinary institute. "We want to learn from it all that we can." The 14-person U.Va. team will visit Curitiba with assistance from special grants from the Sacharuna Foundation of The Plains, Va., focusing on the environment of the Virginia Piedmont, and from U.Va.'s Vice Provost for Research. Later in the spring, teams including other faculty from the Schools of Nursing, Medicine and Architecture, as well as the Darden graduate business school and the Institute for Environmental Negotiation, are expected to travel to Curitiba for further study. McDonough said he hopes to create a long-term linkage with the city and Brazil's Parana region to foster collaborative research and gain "new tools to understand and then craft solutions to complex problems." What's special about Curitiba? With a population of approximately 2 million and many low-income families, it has gained international attention among planners, environmentalists and social scientists as a city finding answers to problems caused by rapid urban development. Among key elements, it has an innovative transportation system and promotes recycling, green space, health, education and jobs that don't harm the environment. Lerner, a native of Curitiba who trained in France as an architect and urban planner and who is now governor of the state of Parana, has specialized in solutions that solve more than one problem, according to McDonough. Faced with rapid growth, he pushed for a high-density city that would give residents easy access to jobs, shopping and another needs and would avoid the long commuting distances and urban sprawl of North American cities. He urged that new buildings be grouped along radial roads leading to the city center and he converted the busiest downtown avenue into a popular pedestrian mall. In the center of each main road are special lanes reserved for express buses that have tube like attachments to make boarding rapid and easy. With buses cheaper and faster than cars, the system is so workable that most commuters take the bus. And even though car ownership is high, fuel consumption is less than the Brazilian average and Curitiba's air is among the cleanest of any Brazilian city. The bus system, running much a like an urban rail system, is one of the main elements of Curitiba's environmental success. Among other notable innovations in Curitiba under Lerner's leadership: -- a special industrial zone that provides many jobs but is compact and restricted to low polluting industries -- special programs regularly adding to trees, parks and green space -- to discourage the garbage-dumping common to poor urban areas, a program of providing staple foods or transportation tokens to residents in return for bagged refuse -- strong emphasis on recycling, which is taught widely in schools. In addition, street sweepers and others are able to sell items to recycling centers. As a result Curitiba has among the best recycling rates in the world. -- a city philosophy that low-income residents need good basic services, including free medical care, for a place to be truly liveable. The U.Va. group going to Curitiba March 8-15 will study such elements as transportation, urban planning, social and public policy, landscape and parks, business and economics and education. Group members include: Warren Boeschenstein, associate professor of architecture Bill Bradley, research assistant professor of education and assistant director, Thomas Jefferson Center for Educational Design William Harris, professor of urban and environmental planning Lauren Holnback, graduate student, business administration Richard Johnson, graduate student, urban and environmental planning Shyam Kannan, fourth-year undergraduate student, architecture Burks Lapham, chair, Concern Inc., nonprofit environmental organization Celia Liu, lecturer, architecture William Lucy, professor of urban and environmental planning Ayse Pamuk, assistant professor of urban and environmental planning Kathy Poole, assistant professor of landscape architecture Reuben Rainey, professor of landscape architecture Marie Ridder, School of Architecture Advisory Board member Susan Carlson Skalak, assistant professor of mechanical, aerospace and nuclear engineering ### February 25, 1997 For assistance in arranging interviews about the U.Va. Institute for Sustainable Design or Curitiba, please contact Bob Brickhouse/ U.Va. News Services at (804) 924-6856. Television reporters should call our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.